They're Knocking at Your Door
The Hardest Cut by Spoon is rock and roll–straight up. They're not doing a bit. This is not a prank, bro.
Do you know what I like about The Hardest Cut–track two of "Lucifer on the Sofa" by Austin, Texas alt-rockers Spoon? It's on the level. They aren't doing a bit. There will be no self-aware winking and nudging. This is not a prank (bro).
The Hardest Cut is rock and roll straight up. Starting with an off-mic beat count, the fuzzed out guitars only take about three seconds to come in at a low boil. It's a Texas blues snarl that would feel at home on any ZZ Top record. What follows for the next three minutes is sincere–honest, even–in a way missing from too much post-modern art. This song is exactly what it says on the label: a hard cut.
Spoon has been sincerely rocking for almost 30 years. It's remarkable how consistent the quality of their output has been considering the only consistent members of the band are Britt Daniel and Jim Eno. Spoon gets called alt-rock, art-rock, or post-punk. That's mostly because we have too much time on our hands and spend a lot of that time inventing ever smaller boxes to put things in. (It's okay. I'm not old. All are welcome on my lawn.) The point is that Spoon is a rock band and this song rocks.
The Hardest Cut has a rollicking bass line and crunchy guitars. The tone is sublime. The rhythm section keeps it snappy, clappy, and straight down the middle. Britt's vocals are reserved and cool. As with most Spoon tracks, the mix has plenty of space. The clarity and precision of all parts are outstanding.
On this 2022 release, Spoon is doing the same thing that drew me to them 20+ years ago, where everything sounds deliberate. It's not sparse; plenty is going on, but Spoon's production style is the opposite of messy. It's like–I don't know–a Fitted Shirt? Their sound has been remarkably consistent over the last thirty years across eleven studio albums and thirteen different band members outside the core of Daniel and Eno.
Spoon wanted Lucifer on the Sofa to feel like a live album, and it does. Much of it was recorded that way. After hearing Mark's work with Adele and Queens of the Stone Age, Britt Daniel enlisted Grammy-winning engineer Mark Rankin to produce the album. Good idea, Britt.
The production works on the car radio or a $10,000 stereo. It's a straightforward jam you can just rock out, but there's a lot of meat on the bone if you care to listen critically and gnaw on it for a while. A couple of little standout details: The vocal at 1:08 at the end of the first chorus where everything drops out on the word "cut," and it's quiet enough, for like a tenth of a second, to hear the reverb on the vocal. It adds a ton of presence. I also really dig it at 2:26, where you can hear a squeak on the guitar strings just before Gerardo Larios kicks off a sick rockabilly guitar solo. I'll pick up on this stuff on a third or fourth listen to a song I like, and that's when I start loving it.
Data
Song: The Hardest Cut
Album: Lucifer on the Sofa
Artist: Spoon
Genre: Rock, Alt-Rock, Post-Punk
Year: 2022
Length: 3:13
Composer: Alex Fischel, Britt Daniel
Producer: Mark Rankin, Spoon
